If you’ve only heard one thing about Peter Thiel (and many have heard nothing at all) it is that he is a believer in the power of young blood. The tech multibillionaire and founding investor of the surveillance company Palantir is a public advocate of parabiosis, an experimental field of biology investigating whether transfusions of blood from young people to older ones can stall or even reverse ageing. Rumours that Thiel himself has received such transfusions have persisted for years. When asked about them directly in a rare interview, he replied simply: ‘I’m not a vampire.’
Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian makes for deeply uncomfortable reading. This meticulous biography of big tech’s leading conservative figure (Thiel was a prominent Trump backer, and spoke at the 2016 Republican convention) is full of moments that would startle those with the hardiest constitutions. He emerges as a man feared not only by his enemies but by his close associates. Time and again Chafkin was asked by a potential source: ‘Aren’t you worried he’ll come after you?’
Such anxieties would not be unfounded: Thiel famously funded lawsuit after lawsuit (including one with the wrestler Hulk Hogan) in a bid to revenge himself on Gawker, a network of sites that had run critical coverage of him. His efforts succeeded, eventually bankrupting Gawker and its founder, the former Financial Times journalist Nick Denton.
But it’s the tales of Thiel’s early days that really shock. In a move which seems ironic given his later suppression of media outlets, during his time at Stanford in the late 1980s he actually founded a publication, the Stanford Review, and served as its editor for several years. The content was both reactionary and ahead of its time.
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